Despite warnings by US Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates that half-measures are insufficient, the Sunni Bahrain monarchy has found itself unable to offer any substantial concessions to the Shiite citizen majority.

Bahrain is an absolute monarchy where the king appoints the 40 members of the senate. The 40 members of the lower house are elected, but gerrymandering prevents the Shiite majority from attaining a majority of seats in it. Besides, the lower house of parliament is relatively toothless, and it can be overruled by the appointed upper house. Both can be over-ruled by the king.

The monarchy allows the US Fifth Fleet to use a naval base at Manama for hist HQ, a key military asset for Washington that the Pentagon would be loathe to lose.

The Guardian goes further and reports that the Bahrain government may ask Saudi troops to come in to quell the protests. This step would be a game-changer in Bahrain, and it is hard to see how the Sunni monarchy could retain any legitimacy at all among its Shiite subjects if it took this desperate step.

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19 Responses

Yasser

what your are looking at here is just one side of the story, what realy happend was those anti government people where blocking the roads and didnt allow people to go to work, the government sent them police men with no weapon to move them, but got stabbed by swords and bumped by cars, after that happend, the government sent police with tear gas to stop was is going on. At the same time they attacked University of Bahrain, Stole alot of its computers and broke almost what ever they where able and attack students to. This was all shown clearly with pictures and videos

Sorry I prefer to believe my own lying eyes thank you very much. Too bad we won’t get to see any of those videos that would support your ridiculous contentions. All foreign journalists are in the process of being expelled and domestic journalists are being violently attacked and jailed by the regime.

Kopje

Somewhat misleading opening line…pray do tell what you would have the police do when the “peaceful demonstrators” block a cross-town highway at morning rush hour? Lay down and further allow civic disobedience? In which democratic country would that have been permitted, let alone a GCC country?

Watch other clips and you’ll see the “peaceful demonstrators” were pretty effective at running down policemen with their vehicles — attempted manslaughter charges for anyone?

I can understand the need to support anti-monarchists; not so sure you want to be supporting anarchists. That way is feeding into the sectarian BS (egged on no doubt by vested interests) and the fast oncoming wreck called civil war.

BTW, I have a vantage point in that I work here and use that road to get to work.

“About 1,000 Saudi soldiers entered Bahrain early on Monday morning through the causeway to Bahrain,” the Reuters news agency reported a Saudi source as saying, referring to the 26km causeway that connects the island kingdom to Saudi Arabia.”

The Bahraini king is a traitor “inviting” a foreign military into his country to fight his own people.

Doubt that the King will ask the Saudi military to save him. Of course, history does allow that kings can pay folks to come in and help if they wear his colors (uniform) into battle. But Saudi military units, no way, never happen. (Well not in the next 24 hours;-)

Saudi forces just entered Bahrain allegedly to protect government buildings. This is the country that with the Gulf States are requesting a no-fly-zone over Libya. I would assume that now western government will surely move to protect like in Libya the popular bahraini revolution… wishful thinking

R.

“A senior diplomat in a western mission to the UN in New York, who I have known over ten years and trust, has told me for sure that Hillary Clinton agreed to the cross-border use of troops to crush democracy in the Gulf, as a quid pro quo for the Arab League calling for Western intervention in Libya.”link to craigmurray.org.uk

I guess the west already lost its power over Arab artificial countries.
Arab Revolution started in Libya, then Tunesia, neighbour of Libya, then Egypt, also neighbour of Libya.
This is because Tunesians and Egypts were and are still able to receive Libyan Television broadcastings.
Juan Cole, I guess you underestimated the power of Libya in exporting the World Revolution.
From now on, history will be written by the peoples, not by some nuclear lobby or military-industrial complex.
The second Millenmium is history.
Welcome in the Third Millennium.